NPPC urges resolution to West Coast labor dispute

The National Pork Producers Council and 92 other food,
agricultural and allied industry groups today urged the parties involved in a
labor dispute that’s affecting food exports that ship out of West Coast ports
to resolve their differences as soon as possible. The organizations also called
on the federal government to consider all remedies to bring the dispute to a
swift end.

Slowdowns by dock workers at the ports in Long Beach, Los
Angeles and Oakland, Calif., and in Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., have stranded
thousands of containers of pork and other farm products over the past several
months. Since November, pork prices, for example, have tumbled by 20 percent in
large part because of the port problem, and meat and other perishable products
awaiting shipment soon may need to be destroyed or discounted and sold on the
domestic market. One estimate has the U.S. meat and poultry industries losing
more than $30 million a week.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and
the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) have been unable to hammer out a new
contract since the last one expired in July. Although the ILWU initially agreed
to continue sending workers to the ports during the contract negotiations, in
November it reneged on that agreement.

Exports of agricultural products have grown to $144 billion
in 2013 from $46 million in 1994, with much of the growth in Asian markets,
which are most directly affected by the ports slowdowns.

In an open letter to the White House, congressional
lawmakers, the PMA and the ILWU, NPPC and the other organizations pointed out
that the increase in food and agriculture products exported has been very
beneficial to the companies that own West Coast ports and to the dock workers.
“But the apparent indifference by [the PMA and the ILWU] to the impact the
slowdowns are having on our sectors is disturbing,” the groups wrote.